1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (35 page)

Where:
In Nice
, Chez Pipo, tel 33/4-93-55-88-82,
chezpipo.fr
.
Mail order:
For chickpea flour, amazon.com (search bobs mill garbanzo flour).
Further information and recipe:
Flavors of the Riviera
by Colman Andrews (1996);
saveur.com
(search socca).

Lemon soufflé is delicately inviting.

It’s amazing what some hot air will do for a few simple eggs. Leave it to the frugal French to stretch the humblest of ingredients into a gourmet dish (generally with a gourmet price point attached). It’s all a matter of physics, of course, the air beaten into egg whites that expand with heat, lifting the flavored egg yolk mix and causing the whole to take on an ethereal, cloudlike elegance.

As in the realm of physics, every little thing matters: the proportion of aerating egg whites to liquid egg-yolk flavoring; the amount of air beaten into the stiff, shiny whites; the oven temperature; the application of sugar (or bread crumbs, for a savory soufflé) to the inside of the mold so that the mass can gain purchase on the sides and rise; and the careful removal from the oven so that a sudden gust of cold air does not cause collapse.

While most soufflés take on the guise of sweet dessert, savory soufflés can make enticing first or main courses that are zesty with cheeses such as Gruyère, Parmesan, and even one of the pungently spicy blues if mollified with some heavy sweet cream and chives. Crumbles of salmon (smoked or fresh), crustaceans such as crab or lobster, finely puréed asparagus, spinach, or even game meats, poultry, or calf’s brains with black truffles—all can be worked into airy triumphs, each properly herb-seasoned.

But it is as desserts that soufflés most often enchant. Think dark, bittersweet chocolate, just a bit molten at the center; the more sophisticated overtones of coffee, or orangey Grand Marnier, or kirsch-spiked strawberries; sun-gold apricots; autumn chestnuts with their woodsy tang; even the sweet plainness of vanilla. Some like their soufflés cooked through until they are
slightly spongy at the center, while others maintain they should be a bit unset and runny. All agree that, when sprinkled with sugar for a crystalline finish, and served with appropriate sauces or just softly whipped cream on the side, a soufflé dessert is what lies at the end of the gustatory rainbow.

Years ago, the New York restaurant La Grenouille found a way to make it easy to sample multiple soufflé iterations in one go. Its kitchen still turns out so-called harlequin soufflés, half-and-half flavor combinations achieved with the placement of a piece of parchment or wax paper down the center of the mold. The two flavors of mix can then be poured in, one on each side. Halfway through the baking, when the mix has set, the paper is pulled out, to magical effect. Here’s to a dream of infinite soufflés.

Where:
In New York
, La Grenouille, tel 212-752-1495,
la-grenouille.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961).

There’s no need to coat onion soup with cheese.

Once upon a very long time ago in fine French restaurants, onion soup was served without the gratinéed cheese and bread topping that is now ubiquitous; as appealing as that gooey topping may be, it renders the soup much too heavy as a precursor to a substantial main course. The now-prevalent version gained popularity in the bistros of the Parisian wholesale vegetable market, Les Halles, where in the wee hours it was a single course, believed to be an antidote to a night of heavy drinking. But in formal restaurants, onion soup used to be ladled out into wide soup plates, with bowls of grated Gruyère or Emmental, or French Comté cheese and some toasty croutons on the side. Special care in preparation gave the soup a richness and shimmer of its own.

As with so many dishes, its popularization led to an overall decline in its quality. Renditions became either too bland and devoid of onions, or so intensely dark brown and matted with onions that they seemed more like gravy. Even worse were the onion soups based on metallic-tasting canned or dehydrated bases.

Like all seemingly simple dishes, perfect onion soup allows little margin for error. For starters, the onions should be deep yellow in color, meaning that they have aged and lost much of their water; this is how they gain a high concentration of the sugar that, when caramelized, imparts a rich golden brown color and deep, multilayered flavor to the broth. Thinly sliced, the onions are slowly sweated in butter in a heavy saucepan or soup pot, for about 35 minutes. The pot should be closely watched and frequently stirred until the onions turn a bright, deep gold with just a hint of brown, but never black—although the exact shade may vary with the cook’s palate. Some add a pinch of sugar to the browning step to speed the coloring, but usually the onions need no such help.

Next, they are sprinkled with a little flour to bind the final result, and then they are doused with hearty beef stock, alone or in a half-and-half blend with water and a splash of dry white wine. The mixture is simmered, half-covered, for 30 to 45 minutes. If not served immediately it gets a final reheating, and the flavor is adjusted with salt, freshly ground pepper, and a shot of Cognac, Calvados, or kirsch—or, for milder tastes, sherry or Madeira. These days the preferred cheese may be Parmesan, but Gruyère, Comté, and Emmental are far more subtle, allowing the other flavors to be more discernible.

Those who prefer onion soup gratinéed should pour each portion into fireproof crocks made especially for this purpose, and place a crouton of bread browned in olive oil or butter and a blanket of grated cheese on top. The crocks then go under the broiler until the topping is a molten golden brown.

Further information and recipes:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
smittenkitchen.com
(search french onion soup).

Soupe au pistou is at once homey and chic.

If summer doesn’t sound like soup season, you’ve probably never sampled Provence’s colorful and fragrant
soupe au pistou
, the classic country vegetable-and-bean stew enhanced with a
pistou
sauce of basil, garlic, and olive oil. In the Provençal dialect,
pistou
also stands for the pestle that, along with a mortar, mashes that basil, garlic, and olive oil into a velvety, verdant seasoning. The paste, of course, is similar to a sauce made famous by the neighboring Italians of Liguria—pesto (see
listing
). In fact, this summer favorite is a first cousin to Italy’s minestrone, no coincidence given that all of this region once belonged to the House of Savoy and these lands share the same Mediterranean climate.

As with any beloved local specialty, soupe au pistou has many variations. At its most basic, it begins with the creamy local white beans known as
coco blanc
and the tan beans called
coco rouge.
The beans are sautéed with onions (some cooks add bacon, pancetta, or even a pig’s foot at this stage for flavoring), and then the vegetables are slowly added to the pot—while nonnegotiables are green beans, potatoes, and tomatoes, other favorites include leeks, squash, zucchini, and carrots. (The only no-nos are vegetables that would bleed and overpower the base, such as spinach.) Depending on the cook, water or chicken stock goes in, and then it’s time for the pasta—most traditionally, the thinnest angel-hair strands at the end of the cooking process, but some prefer elbow macaroni or small shells.

The cook can choose to make a version that’s almost fancy by trimming the vegetables to uniform sizes, or utterly rustic by throwing in the ingredients in various shapes. Either way, the final texture should be thick enough to allow a spoon to stand tall, and the single most important moment is the addition of the pistou: It must be added as late in the process as possible, after the soup has been removed from the stove, and preferably at the table. (A sprinkling of Parmesan may be added at this time, too.) This timing ensures that none of the garlic’s bite or the basil’s intense sweetness can cook off, lending the soup a marvelous brightness of flavor. Something magical happens when the raw sauce hits the hot liquid and the tender beans and vegetables—and it’s this moment that turns the soup from a winter warmer into a warm-weather delight. Indeed, this soup is an ideal evocation of the lushness of late summer when it is served at room temperature, or even a little cooler, as is minestrone in Milan.

Where:
In Mougins, France
, Le Bistrot de Mougins, tel 33/4-93-75-78-34,
lebistrotdemougins.com
;
in New York
, Café Boulud, tel 212-772-2600,
cafeboulud.com/nyc
;
in New Orleans
, La Provence, tel 985-626-7662,
laprovencerestaurant.com
;
in Roseville, CA
, La Provence Restaurant & Terrace, tel 916-789-2002,
laprovenceroseville.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook
by Daniel Boulud (1999);
Glorious French Food: A Fresh Approach to the Classics
by James Peterson (2002);
gourmet.com
(search soupe au pistou).

A lofty pastry crown on a fragrant soup.

To celebrate being awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1975 by France’s then president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Paul Bocuse was invited to prepare a meal at the presidential residence, the Elysée Palace. Rising to the occasion, the famed chef created an almost indecently tantalizing soup that has since become a classic at his three-star restaurant in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or, just outside of Lyon.